Sunday, March 16, 2008

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## Tibetan riots spread, security lockdown in Lhasa

Benjamin Kang Lim and Chris Buckley, Reuters Published: Sunday, March 16, 2008

BEIJING (Reuters) - Rioting erupted in a province neighboring Tibet on Sunday, two days after violent protests by Tibetans against Chinese rule in Lhasa in which the region's exiled representatives said 80 people had been killed.

Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, said the Tibetan nation was in serious danger and called for an investigation into what he called cultural genocide in his homeland.

A police officer in Aba county, Sichuan, one of four provinces with large Tibetan populations, said a crowd of Tibetans had hurled petrol bombs in the main county town, burned down a police station and a market and set fire to two police cars and a fire truck.

"They've gone crazy," said the officer, her voice trembling down the telephone as the main government building there came under siege.

Security forces fired tear gas and arrested five people.

The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said on a Web site that paramilitary police shot and killed at least seven protesters. A police officer, reached by telephone, denied this.

One ethnic Tibetan resident in Aba said there were sounds like gunshots and there was widespread talk of 10 or more dead.

"Now it's very tense. There are police going round everywhere, checking and looking over people for injuries," said another Aba resident, adding that many of the rioters were students of a Tibetan-language high school.

Anti-riot troops locked down Lhasa -- remote, high in the Himalayas and barred to foreign journalists without permission -- to prevent a repeat of Friday's violence, the most serious in nearly two decades.

A businessman there, reached by telephone, said a tense calm had descended on the city and most people were staying indoors.

Xinhua news agency said the authorities had stopped granting foreigners tourist permits to visit Lhasa for their "safety."

"We also suggest foreign tourists now in Tibet leave in the coming days," Xinhua quoted Ju Jianhua, director with the region's foreign affairs office, as saying.

The Dalai Lama, the Nobel peace laureate who fled to India in 1959, called from his Dharamsala base in the Himalayan foothills for an investigation into the situation in Tibet.

"Whether China's government admits or not, there is a problem ... the nation with ancient cultural heritage is actually facing serious dangers...," the Dalai Lama, reviled by Beijing as a separatist, told reporters in Dharamsala.

"Then also, whether intentionally or unintentionally, somewhere cultural genocide is taking place," he said, calling on Tibetans to express their resentment peacefully.

"CHINA DESERVES OLYMPICS"

The Dalai Lama, who says he wants more autonomy but not independence for Tibet, said China deserved to host the August Olympic Games, but the international community had a "moral responsibility" to remind China to be a good host.

State-run China Central Television (CCTV) said on Sunday that social order had "basically been restored" in Lhasa, but showed footage of deserted streets choked with debris and burnt-out buildings near the central Jokhang temple area.

Clean-up crews were out on city streets on Sunday to shovel charred wreckage onto trucks and remove overturned vehicles, and government agencies and schools would resume normal operation on Monday, Xinhua news agency said.

The spasm of Tibetan anger at the Chinese presence in the region followed days of peaceful protests by monks and dealt a sharp blow to Beijing's preparations for the Olympics, when China wants to showcase prosperity and unity.

The Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala said 80 people had died in the clashes between authorities and protesters last week, and 72 had been injured.

Xinhua news agency said only that 10 "innocent civilians" had died, mostly in fires lit by rioters, and that 12 policemen had been seriously injured.

Tibet is one of several potential flashpoints for the ruling Communist Party at a time of heightened attention on China.

The government is concerned about the effect of inflation and wealth gaps on social stability after years of breakneck economic growth, and this month it said it had foiled two plots by Uighur militants in the large Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang, including an attempt to disrupt the Olympics.

Kang Xiaoguang, a political scientist at the People's University of China who has long studied social stability, said there was very little chance of the Tibetan protests sparking a chain reaction in broader China.

"I think the chances are minimal," he said. "This is a localized problem. In the Han Chinese regions there's virtually zero sympathy for the Tibetan rioters, and so virtually zero chance that this will spread."

The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said in an e-mail that monks of the Amdo Ngaba Kirti monastery, also in Sichuan's Aba prefecture, had raised the banned Tibetan flag and shouted pro-independence slogans after prayers on Sunday.

Chinese security forces stormed the monastery, fired tear gas and prevented the monks from taking to the streets, it said. The report could not be independently confirmed.

(Additional reporting by Jason Subler, Lindsay Beck and Ian Ransom in Beijing, John Ruwitch in Chengdu and by Jonathan Allen in Dharamsala)

(Editing by Tim Pearce)

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